Guidance for Candidates and Agents at local government elections in England

Candidate spending is spending on activities to promote your candidacy, or to criticise other candidates, during the regulated period.1

To be candidate spending it must:

• be an activity on list of types of election expenses
• promote the candidate2

Once you have determined that something is candidate spending, you need to determine how it must be reported. It may be:

• ordinary spending incurred by the candidate or agent 
• notional spending, where something is provided for you and made use of in your campaign
• local campaigning, where spending is incurred by someone other than the candidate or agent

The following pages provide detail on the activities that count as candidate spending and the different ways the spending is reported.